(A) Dog Man Guest Stars in The Human Target #10

With only 48 hours left to unmask his murderer before he drops dead, the pieces are finally falling into place for Christopher Chance. But before he can solve his own killing, he must deal with the consequences of Guy Gardner’s. Enter G’nort. The Human Target #10 is written by Tom King, drawn by Greg Smallwood and lettered by Clayton Cowles for DC Black Label.

Armaan Babu: I’ve been so disappointed by the most recent issues that I decided to do a little mental exercise before reading this issue: to let go of the murder mystery. To try and imagine what the best way to enjoy a Tom King comic is (because Greg Smallwood has so far not given us a single panel that I don’t love): What does King bring to the table when he’s at his best?

Basically, I went into this with a sense of optimism.

As a consequence, I’m not sure if this comic is actually an uptick in quality that is close enough to the end to have stopped messing about, or whether the power of positive thinking really does overcome all other concerns, but I enjoyed this issue of Human Target a lot more than I’ve enjoyed the comic in a while! So, Dan, as the one of us who is possibly more objective here — how’d you enjoy this issue?

Dan Grote: This comic is just mean. Mean and dumb and I fucking hate it and I wish this series were over.

I Am Untethered and My Rage Knows No Bounds

Dan: I knew. I knew as soon as I saw the beer bottle next to G’nort’s head at the top of the cover (brilliantly designed by Smallwood to mimic the placement of Chance’s flask in the opposite corner), we were in for a bad time. 

Now, I don’t profess to be some kind of G’nort stan. I can’t cite chapter and verse from his many appearances. My only real exposure to the character is an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, in which G’nort helps Batman, Guy Gardner and Sinestro fight Despero. But that episode was enough to convey the basics of the character: He’s dumb, he makes mistakes but he’s a Very Good Boy.

So what does he do? What does Thomas King decide he wants to bring to G’nort Esplanade G’neeshmacher of the planet G’newt? He makes him a literal boozehound. A dumb, drunk, entirely too talky dog-man whom Chance can con into helping him break into the Green Lantern Corps’ files. BWAHAHA he lives in a shitty house and eats pizza. BWAHAHA he throws up all over one of the Guardians of Oa. BWAHAHA Guy knocks him out with one slap, a callback to a moment that’s been played out ad nauseum since the 1980s. BWAHA FUCKING HA.

… I’m sorry. This one really had me in my feelings.

Armaan: So call it my power of cheery optimism, but … I actually feel like G’nort got off easy, especially compared to a lot of the others we’ve seen on the team. It’s not the mindless, aggressive idiocy of Booster Gold, nor the sad sap everyone takes advantage of we saw with J’onn J’onzz. King’s thesis on G’nort is pretty straightforward: He’s a clumsy oaf, but a good one, willing to bend the rules for a good person no matter how much trouble it gets him in.

Honestly, I’ve seen G’nort appear so many times as the slapstick idiot that this might actually be one of my favorite interpretations of him. The entire purpose of G’nort, as far as I can tell, is to be the well-meaning butt of the joke for an entire universe — and a catalyst for everything that goes wrong. To see him as someone who is at least getting to mess up to achieve good things — on purpose, no less — definitely endears me to him.

Also — he is the only person in this book that you couldn’t even consider as a suspect, and we put pretty much everyone down as suspicious, to varying degrees. G’nort, though — no. He is a good boy. Just not a very competent one.

Dan: I wish I came away with a more subversive take on my initial reading. I can see pieces of it, certainly, but I also see King’s penchant for … King-ifying his characters, and I think mixing that with a man made to look like I should want to rub his belly and scritch him behind the ears got the better of me. Which is probably the intent. Grrrrrrr.

But let me redirect toward what I hope is a more valid quibble: Why does G’nort live on Earth? He is a Green Lantern. One of the alien ones. He can live anywhere. Presumably he has his own sector to patrol. There are already at least three Lanterns on this Earth (Guy, Hal Jordan and John Stewart have all either appeared or been namechecked); why would G’nort just be around, unless a certain writer needed to use him as a narrative punching bag?

Armaan: You know, you got me there, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the Justice League International were the best friends he ever had and he got a place on Earth just to be close to them. I bet some of them actually visit, too. That looks like a really nice cabin to hang out and get drunk in. 

The one criticism I have is, and this shocks me, with Smallwood’s art choices here. 

Dan: AUDIBLE GASP!

Armaan: G’nort looks a little … too human. I’m all for expressiveness, of which Smallwood is a marvel, but G’nort looks less like a humanoid dog than he does a human who insists on wearing dog makeup, and it’s a little unsettling!

Dan: There’s a photo reference here, but I can’t tell for who. I see John Candy’s Barf from Spaceballs. I see the lovechild of John Ratzenberger and George Wendt from Cheers. I see every schlubby 2000s CBS Monday night sitcom dad. But that’s good photo reference, when you can’t actually see the original source. Not like when Mike Deodato Jr. just blatantly drew Michael K. Williams into Not All Robots.

Armaan: I do enjoy that the few constructs we see G’nort make are a little goofy. I appreciate an artist who makes Green Lantern constructs unique to the Lantern. Guy’s are show-offy — an extension of his performative masculinity. Ice’s constructs are classic ’50s dreams, and G’nort? G’nort’s have loose, goofy lines, a four-fingered cartoon glove that picks his beers up for him.

G’nort knows who he is, and I’m a little jealous of how comfortably he lives with that.

Speaking of locations, I did enjoy this trip to Oa. Beautiful modern architecture, the most soothing of greens — Smallwood has a talent for soothing colors — the clean, workspace grandness of the halls we only get glimpses of. Art aside, though, the Oa section is … well, look. We’re meant to take this as a simple, face-value gag. “The Guardians are like the CIA, they keep files on everyone and it’s funny how insidious that is.” But I’m a comics nerd and I can’t help but think about the implications of what we have here. How do the Guardians even gather this much information? Are John, Kyle, Hal and Guy spies as well as Green Lanterns, or do the Guardians have their own spy force? How do they get baby pictures of Chance, and do they keep track of everyone or just people adjacent to the superhero community, and how does it work for planets that don’t have superheroes? Dan, Dan, you need to stop me before I go on an all-out rant about what this could imply, continuity-wise!

Say. What’s in this drink?

When a Problem Comes Along, You Must Drug It

Dan: G’nort isn’t the only character Chance, and by turns this book, takes advantage of this issue. The whole comic is about Chance drugging people to get the information he needs. He slips Ice a mickey so he can ply G’nort with booze so he can break into the Oa files so he can take advantage of Guy Gardner’s secret peanut allergy.

All of this is because Chance deduced at the end of last issue — after Batman never came for him — that Guy Gardner is still alive. That Ice did not, in fact, freeze him into a million little pieces in issue #6. And if that’s the case, then Ice may have helped Guy fake his own death, which puts her back near the top of the suspect list for the whole poisoning mystery we got away from for a bit. So the game is back to being afoot.

In my initial read of this recap, I felt like there were some logic leaps being made, that King was explaining a mystery to us instead of showing it. But also maybe I was too busy being blinded by G’nort rage. Armaan, you’ve been keen on the whodunnit of it all, what do you think?

Armaan: I think my head hurts, but aside from that, I also think there are a number of essential parts to a good mystery, and two of the most important are compelling characters and a clever plot.

This book has gone all in on the former, to varying levels of success, but it’s always been weak on the latter. To put it in catchier terms — this comic is more Glass Onion than it is Knives Out. I’m saving this link to use it to express what I suspect will be my feelings when we get to the finale.

I don’t think the leap in logic that Chance makes here is too out of keeping with his usual pace of mystery solving, though — we’ve just been left out of his internal process this issue. We usually get an OK description of how Chance arrives at his conclusions, but I suspect that’s being held off for the next issue, in which he pieces everything together before the conclusion.

What I’m more interested in is what it says about his relationship that he drugs Ice with as much confidence, and as little hesitation, as he does. Last issue made me think a lot about their relationship, what they are to each other, and the terrible ways that plays out. We see more of it with the short scene we get with the pair of them at the beginning of the issue.

Like her constructs, like her poise and sense of style, like her own backstory, Ice is obsessed with an image of perfection. She thinks she can fix Chance. She acts like the end is not coming, that there is a future the two have together. And, of course, she’s holding up the illusion that the two of them are complicit in murder, but I’ll get back to that in a bit.

Chance is also a man obsessed with image — he’s made an entire career out of being other people, and he is very, very good at deceiving would-be murderers. He sees what Ice wants him to be, and he’s happy enough to embody that, and when he can’t, he’ll lie to, manipulate and even drug the woman he claims to love without batting an eye. He’s enough of a cynic to be comfortable with thinking that everyone lies — and that’s what makes him a good detective, but an absolutely horrendous boyfriend. Him drugging Ice is not about keeping another potential suspect at bay — it’s just him making a choice that preserves the illusion for just a little longer. 

Neither of them really cares about each other. All they care about is the lie. It’s heartbreaking, it’s gross, it’s doomed and it’s very, very noir.

Dan: It’s a good reminder that for as flirty and well-bantered as Chance and Ice appear together, there’s no version of this story that ends well. Of course, the question is, how does this all tie to our prime suspect?

Armaan: So, if Ice is the murderer, she has very, very good reasons for fooling Chance into thinking they killed Guy. One, with the main suspect dead, Chance can’t interrogate Guy to confirm his suspicions — the case is closed on a “That’s All We’ll Get Out of That” technicality. Two, by making herself one of Guy’s killers, she doubles Chance’s protective instincts, instincts that all but blind his natural detective skills. If it wasn’t for Batman seeing what Chance didn’t — that Guy is still alive — Chance would have just laid low for the rest of his life; less than half a week.

Look at Smallwood’s incredible work on facial expressiveness, though, when Chance reveals that he knows Guy’s alive. Ice is heartbroken. Which to me, clearly indicates that she did not want to do this — that this was someone else’s idea. And whose idea would it be but Nancy’s? Who else but Nancy would have a clear understanding of how JLI protocol would work, knowing that Guy could both fake his own death and allay investigation by being on a fake interdimensional job? Who else has the insight into the minds of the JLI and the people they work with? Who else could convince Ice to do something this extreme? 

Once again, all signs point to Nancy. 

Dan: I just want to sit here and inbreathiate this moment. This moment where you’ve once again cracked the case. I am in awe of you, Benoit Babu.

Can You Tell Me How to Get, How to Get to …

Dan: Hey, gonna wrap up this column by steering us off topic. Did you perchance read Danger Street #1?

Armaan: I did, but found I had very little to say about it beyond “No more of this, please.” Why do you ask? 

Dan: I came to the same conclusion, but I think I came to it as a result of reading this series.

So for those unfamiliar, Danger Street is King’s new series with artist Jorge Fornes, with whom he previously worked on Rorschach, colorist Dave Stewart and letterer Cowles. In some ways, the premise is similar to Target: Take a cast of characters of varying levels of notoriety — in this case a bunch of randos who first appeared in DC’s 1st Issue Special in the 1970s — and tie their stories together in a misbegotten quest to join the Justice League via an attempt to defeat … sigh … Darkseid. Hijinks ensue.

I bring it up because I see so many of King’s narrative tics playing out again. An ensemble cast he’s dying to put his stamp on. An artist he can rope into nine-panel grids and non-experiments in formalism (especially because this is meant to mimic a Bronze Age comic). Darkseid as both throwaway line and existential threat. Repetition. Talkiness. Grawlixes. Repetition.

I think dissecting Human Target as we have this past year, all these things stand out more. I think I knew why Strange Adventures and Rorschach bothered me but wasn’t able to express it quite as well then as I could now. I think without Human Target I might have been tempted to read more of Danger Street. I know I don’t want to, and asked my LCS specifically not to add it to my pull.

Simply put, covering this series with you has made me a better person, Armaan. Thank you.

Armaan: The pleasure has been mine, Dan, and if our reviews can turn one reader away from a poor comic that was far more hyped than it had any right to be, it will all have been worth it.

Cheap Shots

• Didja Know: G’nort’s vest is a visual signifier that he was originally based on The Honeymooners’ Ed Norton, played by Star Wars Holiday Special star Art Carney.
• The bar Kevin and Keith’s is named for JLI creators Kevin Maguire and Keith Giffen. Because DC Comics love to name a place after a people.
• [Editor Matt’s Note: And especially Tom King; dude did it 14 times on one page in the last issue of Gotham City Year One]
• That Guy was defeated by his own toxic masculinity is funny, as long as you don’t think about it too much.
• Seriously, peanut allergy or no, the ring can’t stop drinks being forcibly shoved down his throat? Get outta here.

Dan Grote

Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts WMQ&A: The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.

Armaan Babu